I am a licensed clinical social worker who just happens to adore the written word. I have had a private practice and am now writing a memoir on my life in the company of my father and many of my clients who have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I hope to dispel some myths and break down some barriers for those with mental illness.
I write out of need and complete joy, which I hope to convey throughout my blogs. The human experience is not exclusive to one group. I hope to appeal to most as I touch on some pretty heady material with some self-deprecating humor and raw emotion thrown in for good measure.
I have four amazing children, one HUGE dog and a tolerant husband. I am blessed.

The human experience in all its glory….

All posts tagged: depression

Too hard, she whispered, this life. It had borne down with such force as to suffocate the hope, eradicate the joy, extinguish the scope of what she believed she could handle. Where are you God? she whimpered, her vision fueled by sorrow…(more a cry for help than a questioning of His divine marrow. But would she even make herself follow?) Let me help you stand. She heard it softly, yet stronger than a whisper… she questioned His demand, began to answer but words came out […]

With each new day of the holiday season people find themselves either, a.) simply overwhelmed at what they haven’t completed yet when they foolishly compare themselves to their neighbors, b.) joyously overwhelmed by the lights and the beauty and the magic, or c.) agitatedly overwhelmed at the sheer magnitude that a new year brings regarding responsibility or “fresh starts” with unknown resolutions due to life not lived as they’d promised the year before. Then there are […]

EVERYWHERE she looked…grey. The sky, an unusually beautiful deep robin’s egg blue…grey. The scarlet roses in the garden that usually gave her so much joy and affirmation…grey. The pink-cheeked family that shared a fondness for laughter and loved her silliness…grey. The home that wrapped her in a yellow glow of warmth felt cold and grey. Her job with people who relied on her fiery red passion and the calming green hued wisdom…all grey. There was no escaping this dull hum of […]

Flat. As far as the eye could see. Brown with slight deviations of tan. The sand was lying face down along an area that appeared to transcend time. She stood tall against the background of stillness in the middle of nowhere. For as far as the eye could see it was all flat. Nothing more. She heard herself whisper this fact out loud to no one. There was no one anywhere that she could see or hear. She […]

Her tattoo read “just be held” in black lowercase typewriter-key font. It was perhaps one of the most impulsive decisions she’d made for the time commitment it required of her body. She treated herself to those particular three words on a warm day in July when she felt like she was coming completely undone. Casting Crowns new release,Thrive, had premiered on Pandora. In a moment of utter despair their song, “Just Be Held” spoke to her. It cut […]

She looked up at me, tears streaming down both sides of her face. All I could see were her beautifully lilac-tinted eyes full of water. It must be the way her tears had accentuated the blueness that she’d been born with, I thought sensibly I don’t remember them being quite that distinctive a shade. I’m just buying time. I’m being observant while I think of how to respond to my overwhelmed woman-girl. Her long wavy hair – both […]

How very appropriate, I’m thinking to myself as I self-soothe with another bite of my (forbidden) bagel with berry cream cheese. It’s raining…tears. From Heaven, right? How cliché. Do you know how many articles I’ve scanned, Facebook posts I’ve glanced at, Twitter commentary I’ve witnessed, news reports I’ve absorbed in the last 24 hours? The news about Robin Williams’ “apparent suicide” resonates everywhere. People relating to his disease, the major depression, that exhausted him completely as well as the drug […]